Kids in the Garden

Each month I try to post ideas for kids activities in the garden. I realized that I missed last month. I need to set a day each month to do it so it gets done. So, since I thought of it today and today is the 19th...the 19th of each month will be the official day for posting about kids in the garden. I know of other garden bloggers posting "columns" the first weekend of the month, the 15th of the month, and the 30th of the month. I figure no one has a lock on the 19th!

Before I start with some new ideas for kids activities in the garden. I must mention that our sunflower house seems to have failed. I have very bad luck with sunflowers. They grow short and scraggly or not at all. Next year I will try one more time in the sunniest location on my property. The sunflower plot is backed against the woods this year and I'm afraid it is not getting enough light. The year before I think the chipmunks stole the seeds. We also wanted to participate in the Great Sunflower Project, but since we can't get the sunflowers to grow we have to skip it. I figure at least my daughter has learned that gardening is not perfect. We will have some disappointments.

One more update about a past activity...the reading garden is a huge success! Yesterday my daughter pulled her best friend into the garden and announced "No grownups allowed!" They sat on the reading bench together READING! Woohoo! Freedom in the garden is important. Creating secret hideouts and exploration are all important parts of their outdoor learning.

A new found garden activity that we enjoy together is singing. I explained that gardening is fun because it is such a quiet activity that you can chat or sing while doing it. So the little one pulled on her gardening gloves and started making up songs about mother nature. "We love plants. Plants are gooood, ooooooo." I decided to turn it into a little lesson. I asked why she thinks plants are good and she told me they are pretty. So, I told her about how plants take in the carbon dioxide that we breathe out. They turn it into oxygen so that we can breathe. "Plants are good...ooo...they make oxygen. yeah, yeah! oooooo!" (sing this song to your own tune or try Twinkle Twinkle Little Star -- one of our personal favorites.)

Yesterday I encouraged my daughter and her friends to take a break from play to try some of the first raspberries and blueberries of the season. They clamored for as much as they could get. There is nothing like sharing fresh fruit off the bush with kids.

Playing with garden creatures is super fun stuff. (Just don't let your child name a frog it finds and then find one that looks like it dead in the pool the next day. "Mom? MOM! Is that Jackie frog? What's wrong with Jackie frog?!" Tip: The best thing to do is to empty the strainers and scan the pool before your child goes for a dip.) We've begun hunting for butterflies since they are starting to frequent the garden more regularly as their favorite plants are flowering. My daughter has a net to catch them. We then transfer them to a bug house and watch them for a few months before releasing. We have also included other bugs in our hunts. We had grasshoppers and ants visiting at one time. Hunting for small bugs is a great activity because a. It keeps the little one busy for an hour and b. it encourages the child to focus, looking really closely at nature to find really small things. Our intention is to pick up a bug identification book this summer so we can learn more about them. My sister Liz, who is still known for her butterfly catching prowess twenty five years later, sent my daughter a Live Butterfly Garden for her birthday. The set we have is made by Insect Lore. The box contains a cage for the butterflies, but you have to mail away a postcard and three dollars to get the caterpillars and food. (I thought it was a little cheesy that they want three more dollars from us after my sister bought this nice gift. If they really need the three dollars, why not charge it right off the bat? Three dollars isn't a lot, but it seems like they've already been paid...Perhaps I'm just being too cynical?) We will let you know how the butterflies grow.

We have also spent time pressing flowers. We have a fancy press (two pieces of woods with large screws at each corner) from Oriental Trading Company. Most of my life I've used heavy books with pieces of papers in them. My daughter and I go for bike rides and she collects the wildflowers in her front basket. We have wildflower identification guide that encourages her to check off what she finds. Some of the specimens we use for drying are also from my flower gardens. The skinnier the flowers work the best. Flowers with fat blossoms take longer to dry and sometimes mold or turn an ugly color before we complete the process. I'm sure there is a fancy way to prevent this, but this is a pretty simple project. The drying takes about a week. When the flowers are ready, we make collages, taking photographs of friends, cut pieces of colored paper, and adding our own drawings. These make great cards! When I was young, my mother and I put the flowers in our photo albums. As an archivist I must add that though this is quite pretty, it is very bad for your photographs. The organic matter will eat away at the papers. Instead, make copies of photographs or better yet, photocopy the flowers. (My high school art teacher makes beautiful pieces of art out of scanned flowers and has exhibited the work in SoHo.) Allow kids to be creative with the originals, scans, or photocopies. Hone their artistic talents while teaching them about science.

With bugs, fresh fruit, flowers, and musical entertainment we are having a great summer. I hope that you are too. Happy exploring!

Reading in the Great Outdoors

For my family, a large part of nature's attraction is that it offers is a great place to sit and read. There is nothing quite like spreading out a blanket on the lawn and sitting with a good book or magazine. Breezy spring days are especially pleasant after being cooped up inside all winter.

I heard a report on National Public Radio yesterday where the guests debated the future of the printed book. They discussed how computer use is changing the way children read. More and more kids do their primary reading on the computer, rather than in book form. Psychologists talked about how the wiring of the human brain is changing due to this major change in the way kids learn. It was a fascinating discussion about the future of books, the future of the computer, and the future of civilization.

As former librarian with a master's degree in library science and as a bibliophile, I have a keen interest in this topic. In my first professional job as a librarian, I was also the library's archivist and Internet Coordinator. I had my foot in many camps - past, present and future. I do consider myself a techie to a degree, though compared to my husband who works with computers for a living, I am nothing of the sort. I love computers and history. I tend to see the good and bad in moving quickly forward with technology. But I won't go into that here, except to say that it would be more than a shame if we lost the ability to hold a book in our hands and turn the pages.

Those who believe that the printed book should die obviously do not regularly sit in the garden with book in hand. Though I can see how it would be nice to save some trees by not using so much paper, I see little benefit to moving all information to a digital form. Sitting in the garden with a laptop before me does not bring the same sense of peace as a book does. The book's smell, feel, weight, design - in short, it's uniqueness - give me an almost perverse pleasure. This is the same pleasure I feel when I examine an individual plant. To me, a book is a man-made miracle. It is a work of art - a view of the world brilliantly packaged. We can read a book on the surface level, enjoying the author's story as we would enjoy the vibrant colors of a flower. Or, we can dig deeper, trying to read between the lines, forming opinions about the obvious and looking for the not so obvious meaning behind the author's words. This is analogous to the way I sometimes settle back to enjoy an overview of a garden, yet other times the garden experience makes me think about nature's handiwork, the future of the environment, or some other deep topic.

I've never had quite the same inner stirrings for a computer, though I know my husband probably has. He was taking them apart and putting them back together by the time he was ten. He is fascinated by the inner workings of electronics. That is how his brain is wired. Mine is not. Why do we have to settle for one way of thinking? I think that he and I make a very complementary team.

There is room in this world for books and computers just as there is room for peonies and pansies. Each has a place. Think how well-rounded our children will be if we transfer appreciation for all forms of information in our world. The book promotes linear thinking. The computer promotes multi-tasking and non-linear thinking. Both are beneficial depending on the time and place....do you really want to sit in your hammock and read from the computer? What would happen to your electronic reading device if you fall asleep there anyway? I have visions of it crashing to the floor. Dropping a book would be much less expensive if nothing else.

Children in the Garden

Preparing for spring planting, I'm trying to find new ways to incorporate child friendly activities for the garden. We started last year's growing season with an Easter basket of spring gardening tools. A friend of mine and I gave our girls seeds, garden gloves, garden shoes, and trowels mixed in with their holiday candy. Every year, another friend of mine uses the holiday to welcome spring by planting trees with her girls. Children arrive with an innate appreciation and curiosity for nature. Now is the time to help it along.

Direct contact with nature allows a child to explore and develop a keen sense of environmentalism without even knowing it. This year, one of our projects is to design fairy houses. We have three large peonies in our backyard and recently learned that the Barbie fairy Elina lives in a peony. We will be designing our houses to place under the peonies in the hope that Elina and her friends decide to move in. We will also be planting a sunflower patch where my daughter and her friends can have a clubhouse. Including friends in the process spreads the excitement. Some of the other four-year-olds have been invited to pick things for our garden too. They will all garden together.

Last year, I made a shaded reading garden for my little bookworm. We bought a special bench and animal statues to place by our brook. My daughter helped pick it appropriate plants for the shade. We learned together about what plants like the type of environment we had prepared for them My daughter also helped plan the vegetable garden and chose the types of veggies she wanted from a catalogue. Tomatoes were not on her list. She refused to eat the ones we bought at the store. I planted three varieties so she could learn the difference between fresh tomatoes and store bought. Tomatoes are now one of her favorite foods. The bonus about involving kids in planting food is that they learn from where their food comes, which helps them make more informed choices in the kitchen.

The key to involving kids in the gardening process is allowing them full participation. Activities from choosing plants to picking the harvest awakens a child's curiosity and makes them feel grownup. Another activity we do together is picture taking. My daughter and I love spring and summer nature walks. Last year I bought her a Fisher Price camera that she can drop without worry. We will walk in the neighborhood to discover wildflowers growing on the side of the road with cameras in hand. The camera encourages curiosity and discovery by making us look closer at the world around us. While seeking good pictures, we also find good subjects - bees on flowers, tiny mushrooms in swampy areas, birds nests in trees.


Any more ideas for involving kids in this process are welcome! Please spread the spring planting fever!